Special Collections has over ten thousand unique items digitized and available online through the Louisiana Digital Library.

The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is an online library containing photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, oral histories, and other items that document the history and culture of Louisiana. Items come to the LDL from institutions across the state, including libraries, museums, archives, and historical organizations. Information about the LDL can be found on the digital library's About page.

Browse even more LSU-related material in the LDL here.

Featured Collections

Free People of Color in Louisiana

This project brings together materials from LSU Libraries Special Collections, The Historic New Orleans Collection, the Louisiana Research Collection in Tulane University Special Collections, the Historical Center at the Louisiana State Museum, and the Louisiana Division of the New Orleans Public Library. Digitizing these records reunites collections from the same families that were divided across repositories as well as scattered documents, making these materials accessible in one place for the use of historians, genealogists, students, teachers, and the general public. Funded by NEH.

Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Collection

The materials in this collection consist of primary sources that document the heritage, peoples and cultures of the area that was to become the state of Louisiana during a critical and tumultuous period in its history, 1800-1815. Collection contributors include LSU Libraries Special Collections, New Orleans City Archives, and the New Orleans Public Library and was funded by IMLS in 2001.